21:27, Thursday 12 Jun., 2003 Link

There was barter. Then money came along to create barter at a distance. Abstracting bartering. But capitalism gamed money and used it for its own sake: hording, dumping goods; traderoutes, monopolies. Creates money rich and money poor. Could this happen with social exchange? Look at transactional analysis and strokes. If you abstract the stroke barter - ratemypicture et al/ instant messaging - then you create some kind of floating stroke that can move about. Take advantage of it? Amass it, game the system?

Look at something when you're walking, double blink at it/ Your higher brain shuts down until you're there (although you'll "wake" if something needing your attention happens in the meantime)/ Why?/ Maybe people discover that your lifespan is measured by how much of your higher brain you use/ synaptic telomeres/ and they want to preserve it. So: Cultural phase change. It's rude to interrupt people/ Everyone leaves messages/ Talking becomes more like email, IM, completely asynchronous. But this is how to start floating above the time-, space-bound social substrate, how to start abstracting the social exchange, which creates the money-like strokes/ And gives you celebrity.